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Lebanon Detains Islamic State Head’s Daughter, Ex-Wife

Six-Year-Old Daughter is From Three-Month-Long Marriage

Leader of Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi delivers a sermon at a mosque in Iraq. Lebanon’s interior minister says the country’s authorities have detained a daughter and former wife of Mr. Baghdadi.
Associated Press

BEIRUT—Lebanon’s interior minister said the country’s authorities have detained a daughter and former wife of the leader of the extremist group calling itself Islamic State, in the first official comments from a Lebanese official on a high profile arrest that has been shrouded in contradictions and mystery.

Nohad Machnouk
told a local television channel late Wednesday that the woman recently detained and widely reported, according to accounts by Lebanese security officials, to be a wife of Islamic State leader
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,
had been married to the IS leader briefly six years ago but is currently married to another man.

Mr. Machnouk said the woman has lived in Lebanon for a year and a half, and that a child detained with her was proved to be Mr. Baghdadi’s daughter by DNA testing.

“A DNA sample of Al-Baghdadi was brought from Iraq and it is confirmed that the daughter is indeed his,” Mr. Machnouk said in the televised interview. “Any other information is not the truth.”

The announcement came after two days of contradictory statements by Lebanese officials, some of them senior members of the security establishment.

A senior security official on Wednesday said Lebanon backed its claim that the woman was Mr. Baghdadi’s wife—even after this claim was disputed by officials in Washington and Baghdad. The identification of the woman as a former wife of Mr. Baghdadi was based on how the woman identified herself during questioning, and that authorities were still verifying the claim on Wednesday.

‘These people are sources of serious information and it’s useful to listen and learn from them because they know a lot of things.’

—Nohad Machnouk, Lebanon’s interior minister

The senior security official had also said a son rather than a daughter of the woman had been detained with her. It wasn’t immediately clear why there were so many conflicting accounts from Lebanese officials. Some officials and analysts say publicizing news of the arrest of a high-profile jihadist—whether she was identified as the Islamic State leader’s wife or not—is related to ongoing negotiations between the Lebanese government and jihadists for the release of a number of Lebanese police and army members the jihadists’ took captive in August.

The interior minister said he was disappointed by the information leaks, which were unprofessional and a serious security breach.

The woman at the center of the storm, identified as
Suja al-Dulaimi,
was married to the Islamic State leader for three months six years ago, Mr. Machnouk said. Mr. Baghdadi was her second husband, he said, and she is now married to a Palestinian man and is pregnant with his child.

“These people are sources of serious information and it’s useful to listen and learn from them because they know a lot of things,” he said, adding that the woman was well-connected with extremist Sunni groups and had been released from a Syrian prison.

Baghdad on Wednesday said Ms. Dulaimi came from a family of jihadists, but wasn’t the wife of Mr. Baghdadi. Her father was a longtime al Qaeda member who joined Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian jihadist rebel group. Al Nusra is now leading talks, on the jihadist side, on the captured Lebanese servicemen.